Sucking up the Word

A couple of weeks ago, I found a vacuum cleaner on clearance at Sam's Club and bought it. I needed a new one which was evidenced by the amount of icky stuff I pulled out of my living room carpet when I used my new Hoover for the first time. Yuck.

Last weekend, one of my loving family members graciously tidied up the house while I was running errands, including vacuuming the entire house. Lord, please bless them! As they finished up their task in the master bedroom, the brush in the vacuum stopped spinning. We checked to see if there was something stuck in it and couldn't find anything. We declared the belt to be broken and decided to stop by the home improvement store to purchase a replacement.

After taking a couple of days to locate the replacement belt, I waited not-so-patiently for either my husband or the daughter's boyfriend to fix the vacuum for me. They were busy, so it didn't get done. The mess of five grown people, two adult dogs, one cat and a rambunctious puppy was accumulating quickly. Today I couldn't take it anymore and decided to examine the vacuum cleaner myself. There was note on the vacuum cleaner to consult the manual for instructions on changing a belt. Check. I pulled out the manual and followed the instructions to the letter.

Guess what I discovered when I opened up the vacuum? The belt wasn't broken. It had just slipped off the "motor shaft," whatever that is. I slipped it back on, put the vacuum back together and plugged it in. It works like brand new (which it is, by the way)! I felt so good about myself when I was done. I knew more about how the vacuum cleaner works and am completely confident that, if a belt does break one day, I can handle it.

After I got the dogs all riled up from all my celebratory jumping around and high five-ing myself, I realized how much time I wasted by not tackling the issue myself in the first place. I knew there was a problem, but I waited for someone else to solve the problem for me. The longer I waited, the more annoyed and discouraged I became. If I had just turned to the manual written by the company that made the vacuum cleaner in the first place, I would have been able to tackle the issue immediately, eliminating the mess that piled up as a result.

I started thinking about how much we treat our spiritual lives the way I treated that vacuum. We feel like something is amiss and start blaming it on our Sunday School class or our Pastor or the lack of a special Bible study that we'd like to complete. We think, if our church would get all its ducks in a row, I'd be so much happier. We might even take it further and decide that the church isn't "feeding" us the way we need to be fed.

Instead of pointing the finger at everyone else when we feel a bit spiritually dry, maybe we should look at the manual our Creator left for us. The Bible. He left it for us to encourage and instruct us until He returns. We don't need to wait for our Sunday School teacher to read it to us; we don't need our Pastor to explain it to us; and we don't need a special Bible study to help us make sense of everything. All those things are wonderful blessings to us, but they aren't the most essential thing. Knowing God's Word for ourselves; seeking His truth on our own and applying it to our lives and circumstances as His Word instructs is such a better plan. Once we begin to understand for ourselves how God has set up this planet and how He expects us to live in it, we can deal with a lot of stuff without waiting for someone else to solve our problems for us. We will be able to live in confidence, knowing that when the day-to-day stuff happens, God and the Truth of His Word can get us through.

Of course, there are times we all love a supportive group around us as we find our way. That's why we have churches and families. God set up this world to provide those support systems for us. But knowing what our Savior expects of us, understanding our role in this world, is really our responsibility, not our Pastor's, Sunday School Teacher's, Deacon's, etc.

I'm certainly not saying there aren't times we NEED some outside guidance when things get overwhelming. When we really can't do it on our own, we absolutely should run to Godly counsel. I thank God He has placed people in our midst with the ability to shine a light for us when our spiritual batteries seem completely dead. But, for the daily stuff, and even some of that angsty why-isn't-my-life-turning-out-the-way-I-want baggage, the answers can be found in the truth found in our operating manual, the Bible. The problem is, if we don't read it, consider it and apply it to our lives, we'll never really know how effective His Word can be for us. We were created to function well; we just need to read the manual.